People like to say that bitcoiners are speculators, gamblers etc. But what is not owning Bitcoin?

It’s betting that fiat money, a system devised by bankers and politicians for their own benefit, it the superior form of money, and that it will win on a free market of currencies.

I’m sure somebody will reply hurr durr, I don’t own fiat, I own stocks, property, things that yield returns, yadda yadda. Well guess what, then you already don’t trust fiat money.

  • hitwright@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Did they figure out the size issue yet? Since last time I’ve looked it wasn’t really that decentralized due to not being able to get the whole chain on each PC

      • hitwright@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        No I don’t have 600G to spare. No need to start insulting me. And no idea what’s pruning mode. Did they fix the algo to be based on something more regular, or specialized hardware still required making it not so decentralized as advertised?

          • hitwright@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            I ask questions about inherit problems bitcoin had (likely still has). Maybe some breakthrough happened. So far I’m hearing personal attacks from you.

            All I can imply now is that you’re invested in this fool’s gold and trying to find other people to sink with you.

              • hitwright@lemmy.worldEnglish
                01·
                1 year ago

                I had to look it up. It’s still practically useless to mine on anything other than ASIC. ASIC isn’t something an average Joe will buy, unless he explicitly wants to mine on the network. The crypto is not by the people for the people it seems… Just corpo for people just like the bank.

                Another serious problem is deflation actually. The currency doesn’t lose value, therefore it’s not useful to “spend”. It’s more or less the primary use for it.

                Another issue is not being able to force take away from a vallet. If there is a criminal who scams people away, he is impossoble to punish for his actions, since memory based cold vallets are possible.

                And for the finale… Global warming. The bloody proof of work thing still exists it seems. All the devices heavily use energy for this crypto. Democratic central currency often does look like a better alternative to tackle that.

                I really hope for a better currency, but bitcoin just doesn’t still seem to make it. Lightning and pruning is cool.

                  • hitwright@lemmy.worldEnglish
                    01·
                    1 year ago

                    Never said you need ASIC, just said that bitcoin is not democratic, because the average Joe does not participate in mining.

                    Before today’s currency mercentalism reigned supreme. Accumulation of wealth was seen as the primary objective. For an average person it was very limited on what he could get. Most of items and products had to be produced locally. Currency today actually encourages trading. (Whether that’s good or bad is up for debate remarking on your last point)

                    There are many countries, where bitcoin use maybe could be used as an alternative to “dollarization”. Yet the only time I actually saw it happening was during the Ukraine invasion, when Russians traded roubles to bitcoin after leaving the country, since their currency more or less collapsed in the international market.

                    It uses 0.2% of energy and still does not facilitate daily trade. While the whole banking sector (ATMs, banks, cyrrency production, datacenters) use around 0.4% of global energy.

                    Take VISA for example, it does around 24k transactions per second, while bitcoin does around 100. That’s 240 times more. By this it looks that you would need half the worlds energy production just to come closer to daily use as a currency.